Dutch to Vote Despite Assassination

AMSTERDAM —  Dutch leaders agreed Tuesday to go ahead with parliamentary elections next week, as thousands grieved for assassinated anti-immigration candidate Pim Fortuyn.

Police were questioning a 32-year-old white Dutchman caught with a pistol minutes after Fortuyn was gunned down Monday in the parking lot of a radio station after giving an interview.

In Rotterdam, where his upstart party stunned the nation when it captured more than 35% of the vote in local elections less than two months ago, thousands of people laid flowers and lighted candles outside Fortuyn’s home.

Hundreds of supporters of the openly gay politician waited hours to sign a condolence log at City Hall. In the evening, tens of thousands marched silently through the center of Rotterdam to honor Fortuyn.

After meeting with officials from Fortuyn’s party, the government announced that general elections will be held as planned May 15, but the parties agreed not to campaign. Pim Fortuyn’s List, the party named for its charismatic founder, said the slain candidate’s name would remain at the top of its ballot.

Fortuyn, an academic and former columnist, was shot at least five times after leaving the radio station in Hilversum, southeast of Amsterdam. Police said the gunman apparently acted alone.

The Dutch media, constrained by the custom that prevents naming criminal suspects, identified him as Volkert van der G., married and with one child. News reports said the attacker worked for a group called Environment Offensive. Police said investigators found ammunition at the suspect’s home matching a shell casing at the crime scene. The suspect is from Harderwijk, about 35 miles east of Amsterdam. He made no statement to police and was to make a first court appearance in Amsterdam today.

Prime Minister Wim Kok led a moment of silence in the upper house of Parliament, and every party denounced the killing as a threat to the country’s democracy.

The effect of Fortuyn’s death on the election was uncertain. Some analysts predicted a broad sympathy vote for Fortuyn’s party, which was cobbled together just three months after he was expelled from another party for an abusive attack on Muslim immigrants in a newspaper interview.

Others said the party has no ideology and no leader to hold it together with Fortuyn dead.

Many Dutch said the killing, the first political assassination in modern Dutch history, was a jolt to the self-image of a nation of 16 million that saw itself as more sensible, better organized and less violent than others.